It’s a Concept

bout 15 minutes into our phone interview, the Brooklyn-based guitarist Joel Harrison stops me. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Tell me, even if you have to look it up right now online, what is the definition of a concept?” At first, it seems like a strange question. Over the last 25 years, Harrison has dropped album after album of Big Idea music—Paul Motian tunes arranged for strings and guitars; projects dealing with Indian music; a trio of releases mixing jazz and country. But the truth is that these themes come to him in such a natural way that they barely